"AAAHOOOOOOOO
Werewolves of London!"

They did Wil wrong again man. They didn't invite him to the premiere of Star Trek X.

Dude, Wil is cool. He's just like me, and he's just like you. Peeps just don't even know how cool that dude is.

It's almost like the idiots in charge over at Paramount have this desire to kill Star Trek. I hate them all. Bastards. Their writers suck, they have no sense of continuity or anything like that. Want to know what a great Sci Fi series is? Look at Babylon 5. Oh, wait, they stole Babylon 5's idea and story arc and put it in Deep Space Nine. Have you noticed how each Star Trek show sucks more than the last? I tried to give Enterprise a chance, but it's just a little too hokey. Not enough real Sci Fi in it. Too many badforehead aliens.

I got your back Wil. Peeps better reprezent. You don't mess with my homie.

In case you didn't know, Kenzerco, the people who make the Knights of the Dinner Table comic book, have an online comic. If you're a gamer, you should read these comics. If you're not, you still should, because they're often very hilarious.

Although they're usually better than this. This is quite odd.

Observation:

Why aren't all the Christians who buy and adore C.S. Lewis books Episcopalians? (Or Anglicans, or whatever) C.S. Lewis was. My father was an Episcopal priest, and I have been reading Lewis since I was a wee lad. He was an apologist, not just for Christianity, but for his own particular brand of Christianity.

That's all I'm saying.

One of my best friends in the whole world, and first college roomie, Jason LaChance, lives in Seattle. He's just finished a website for his significant other, JoAnne. It's her professional photography online portfolio, is what you would call it. Check it out. And if you happen to be in Seattle, hire her.

That makes me think of something I've noticed. Some of my friends don't have websites. And I know some of them are quite technically proficient. It makes me wonder.

The Thousand Veils

Lifting Illusion
there is no thing there
no thing apart from
or with
yourself.

Bear with me. I stayed up way too late now because of Neal Stephenson. That bastard wrote a really great book, called Cryptonomicon. It's a page turner, and I can't put it down. It's massive and quite daunting at first though, but once you get into it it's amazing. My friend Steven (who I haven't seen in entirely too long) loves his stuff.

So, I was thinking about my vehement anti-smoking position, regarding a conversation I had with my friend Scott a few weeks ago. My position is that smoking in "the Sacred Presence" i.e. me, is BAD. Uncouth. Profoundly rude.

I admit that my feelings transcend the bounds of rationality at times. I hate cigarettes. My father was a smoker. I think it goes back to the time, I guess I was about 11 or 12 years old, that my father had the heart attack. He drove all the way home from his office in Little Rock to Jacksonville. While he was having the heart attack. And he vomited on himself in the car. When my dad walked in the door, covered in vomit, needless to say, I was a little freaked. The ambulance came and took him away, and I cleaned the vomit out of his car.

He survived the heart attack, and the doctor told him that that was the last cigarette he would ever have. And then, my step-mother, what did she do? She kept smoking. In the same room. With him in the house.

Later, about 5 or 6 years later, my dad died of cancer. Granted, it was stomach cancer, but it was cancer. Did the smoking contribute to it? Who knows? But I do know this, out of all of the factors in our environment that govern whether or not you get cancer, smoking is the one factor that is MOST controllable.

I used to lie awake at night, while my dad was dying. He slept out in the living room, because my step-mother couldn't sleep because he was retching and vomiting from the chemo all night long. My bedroom was about 10 feet away from the recliner where he mostly slept, those two long and all too short months. And his retching kept me up all night long. I can tell you this; cancer is a painful and horrible way to die.

Yes, eating foods high in fat can lead to cancer too. But when you eat a cheeseburger, everyone around you is not forced to ingest second-hand cheeseburger.

I think I'm rambling at this point. Anyway, that's my morality tale/diatribe/rant for the evening. Take it for what it is.

Pete's Hot Scotch:

1 cup Hot Chocolate (Ghirardelli preferred, but had to use Hershey's Cocoa instead) made with real milk.
1 tablespoon Vanilla Rum (homemade by my wife with real vanilla beans)
1 tablespoon Coffee Liquer or Kahlua
2 tablespoons Irish Cream
1 tablespoon Buttershots

Very nummy and it warms the tummy.

Some very cool Risk resources.

Our Intrepid World Voyager, Mike, has once again updated his site. You might want to check it out.

Not a lot going on here. Had the last two days off, and have been considerably less productive than I was hoping for. Been trying to wrap my head around Reaktor, to no avail. I think I just like Orion Pro much better. What someone needs to do is write a program that will let you load Reaktor ensembles into programs like Orion Pro as VST instruments.